The long-anticipated clash came to a head as Bush rejected a $606 billion bill to fund education, health and labor programs, complaining that it is too expensive and is larded with pork. Within hours, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) declared that Bush will not get more money to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year unless he accepts a plan to complete troop withdrawals by the end of next year.

Reid’s threat provides a great moment of clarity about the Democrats’ deep investment in defeat. The prospect of the emerging stability in Iraq is so unsettling to the left that the Democrats will openly urge a cut-off of support for the troops in order to sabotage victory, even as they pile spending and taxes to the sky.

The president needs to keep the vetoes coming, and the GOP needs to keep the spotlight on the Democrats demand that the U.S. lose a war it is winning. Rarely does such an obvious and deep divide open in American politics, but the Democrats have been fully captured by their hard left faction, and the results are impossible to disguise or their implications to avoid. No Congress has ever refused to fund troops that are in a war, but this is a radical Congress led by radical Democrats about to nominate a radical candidate for the presidency.